Snake (Two-in-One)

He took one step forward.

Xia Nan felt the temperature of the air around him plummet.

Darkness suddenly fell before his eyes.

The next second, the dense forest shrubs before him, once filled with damp mist, were replaced by a bare stone wall.

"Ah..."

Pain. Dizziness.

It felt like missing a step on the stairs. That instant of panic was enough to make his exhausted body give out completely.

A pained groan escaped his lips as he collapsed onto the ground.

With only the last of his strength, he forced his eyelids open and swept his gaze around.

Seeing no obvious danger, he closed his eyes again as exhaustion and pain surged over him like a tide.

He had no idea how long had passed.

Hiss—

A cold, slick sensation brushed against his cheek. Beneath the hard surface, he could faintly feel muscles writhing.

Xia Nan slowly opened his eyes.

"Fuck!"

He sprang up and flung the reddish-brown snake that had somehow crawled onto him to the ground.

A cold iron-gray flash streaked through the dim air.

The snake's head was severed, and its long body writhed and convulsed.

Only after using the tip of his sword to pick up the snake's head and toss it into a corner did he breathe a slight sigh of relief.

Xia Nan leaned against the stone wall behind him, both hands gripping the Beheading Longsword.

Only now, after his bedraggled escape and brief bout of dizziness, did he finally have a chance to carefully inspect his surroundings.

This was a sealed cave.

There was nothing worth noting. Bare gray stone walls filled nearly every part of his vision.

Strange fungi that emitted a fluorescent glow occasionally clung to the rock surfaces. Their faint blue radiance was the only reason the cave, which should have been pitch-black, was merely "dim."

For some reason, though there were no distinct features to speak of, merely looking at the deathly gray stone wall before him gave Xia Nan a profound sense of unreality, as though it did not belong in the real world.

It was as if a piece of mountain from another world had been cut out and forcibly embedded into this one.

Just like the carriages, Wooden Towers, courtyards... everything he had seen along the way.

And just moments ago, he had been racing through Thin Mist Forest with the Petrification Lizard in hot pursuit. In the blink of an eye, he had been transported here as though he had triggered some kind of trap.

A thoughtful expression appeared on his face.

He did not act rashly.

Once his mind gradually returned to his body and he confirmed that his current location was temporarily safe, Xia Nan's first task was to check his condition.

His legs were the least injured. Only the sides of his calves had been scratched by Thorns during his escape—ordinary abrasions that had already stopped bleeding.

A faint stabbing pain came from the left side of his chest and abdomen, more pronounced whenever he breathed, though it was still tolerable—perhaps a broken rib?

His most serious injury was his right forearm.

Suppressing the pain, he lifted the padding beneath his Leather Armor and found a large patch of purple bruising and swelling near the wrist on his right ulna.

He had been too focused on escaping to feel much of it before.

But now, waves of numb, aching pain radiated from it. Even flexing his fingers or gripping the Sword Hilt took considerable effort.

Before this, he had downed a full half-bottle of Healing Potion just to regain his mobility.

One sip—25 gold!

It hurt to think about, but he did not regret it.

If not for that life-saving potion, he would not have lasted until now. He would have long since been turned into a stone statue by the lizard, then bitten apart and swallowed.

Trading 25 gold for his life? He would have paid 2,500 gold without hesitation!

As he sighed inwardly, Xia Nan's hands did not stop moving. With some difficulty, he took out the Medical Tool Kit he had bought before setting out from the Backpack on his back.

Ordinary-quality Healing Potions could keep someone alive in a crisis, heal most minor injuries, and ease pain.

But they did not produce immediate results for injuries such as fractured bones.

Adventurers had to treat those themselves.

"Riiip!"

Awkwardly, he used the splint included in the kit to secure his forearm. Then, holding the bandage with his left hand, he wrapped it tightly around the arm several times before biting off the excess with his teeth.

According to the treatment method recorded in the Adventurer's Manual, an injured forearm should apparently also be supported with a sling to prevent the injury from worsening.

With his current limited conditions, this was all he could do.

His fingers flexed faintly against the soreness. There were still pale petrified traces at his fingertips, but under the effects of the Healing Potion, they had eased considerably, and some sensation had returned.

Xia Nan pondered:

I think I saw antidotes for petrification at the Alchemy Shop. I don't remember the price, but at least there's hope of recovering.

River Valley Town seems to have a Church too, one that provides post-mission treatment for adventurers. Once I make it back, I can go take a look.

Come to think of it, Xia Nan had saved the Half-Elf's life during the fight against the Rust Monster, leaving him indebted to Xia Nan. They had agreed that he would repay the debt by helping Xia Nan contact a Combat Skill instructor.

But during the chase just now, the Half-Elf had returned the favor by holding back the Petrification Lizard and buying Xia Nan precious time to escape.

After that exchange, Xia Nan somehow owed the other man one instead.

So if Hai An ever needed help in the future, and Xia Nan was capable of lending a hand, he would not mind helping him out a few times.

Of course, that was assuming he could get out of this damned place.

Xia Nan shook his head, casting aside thoughts unrelated to his current predicament.

After treating his injuries, he checked the state of his equipment.

Beheading Longsword—he had barely drawn it during the escape, so it remained intact.

[Dead Line] ring—the "Deflection Force Field" had entered its once-per-24-hours cooldown, temporarily leaving him with one fewer trump card.

Healing Potion—half a bottle remained.

Leather Armor—ruined.

Xia Nan painfully stroked the custom Leather Armor he had purchased from Barn's shop for the "enormous sum" of 10 gold.

From the front, it still looked fine, aside from some bloodstains and grass clippings.

But the back had been completely smashed apart by the Petrification Lizard's impact, covered in dents and cracks. It was clearly unusable now.

Once he returned to town, that would be another major expense.

"Sigh."

With a sigh, Xia Nan put the tattered Leather Armor back on.

He rose to his feet and looked toward the depths of the cave.

Being transported here had allowed him to escape the Petrification Lizard's pursuit, but that did not mean he was safe.

Without his teammates' support, the only person he could rely on was himself.

His chest rose and fell as his breathing gradually steadied and hardened.

Keeping his body slightly angled against the wall and the Iron-Gray Longsword in hand, he began feeling his way along the cave's only path, one step at a time.

"Crack."

A heavy leather boot came down hard, crushing two thumb-sized black scorpions beneath it.

A mud- and blood-stained hand picked up a pale skull devoid of any flesh from the ground.

Xia Nan was now in a deep, lengthy corridor.

There was no telling how it had been excavated. The stone walls on either side were rough and uneven, with no traces of human workmanship.

Yet compared to the empty cavern from before, the tunnel walls were now littered with pale bones.

Drawing close to the wall, Xia Nan used the faint blue glow emitted by the fungi growing on it to carefully identify the skull in his hand.

Before crossing over, Xia Nan, who had no medical background, would never have been able to calmly hold and inspect the skull of another human being like this.

But after experiencing so many brushes with death, mere bones no longer came close to the threshold needed to stir his emotions.

Human... humans again.

Every set of bones Xia Nan could identify with his current knowledge, he had examined one by one along the way.

They had all belonged to humans.

In another world, perhaps that would not have been such a startling discovery.

But the place he was in was a fantasy world that truly contained special races such as Dwarves and elves.

There were also countless mixed-bloods.

If there truly were a place filled with the corpses of intelligent beings, then unless it had been a massacre targeting a specific race, it would be impossible for only humans to appear.

Coupled with the unreal, alien sensation the cave itself gave him, as well as the countless strange structures he had encountered earlier...

Xia Nan vaguely began to guess at something—

Perhaps he had been transported into an area that had likewise come from another world?

He placed the skull back where it had been and continued onward through the dim light, exploring cautiously one step at a time.

Then he reached a dead end.

A cold, pitch-black wall stood directly in front of him, blocking every possible path.

Xia Nan appeared calm, but a flicker of unrest showed in his dark eyes.

This was the only route through the entire cave!

If the passage did not lead outside, then it meant that after finally escaping the Monster's pursuit, he would truly die here.

"Whew..."

Xia Nan took a deep breath, doing his best not to let the countless negative thoughts in his mind spiral any further.

He stepped forward and ran both hands across the wall, trying to find a possible door mechanism.

The wall was jet-black throughout and not made of stone. It was colder to the touch than rock, as though it were made of some kind of metal. Its smooth surface was covered in countless fine, scale-like textures. Running his fingers against them even cut into his skin slightly.

The threat of death made Xia Nan's inspection extraordinarily meticulous. From top to bottom, left to right, his fingertips followed every single line of texture.

Finally!

As he crouched down and felt along the lower right corner of the black wall—

An extremely faint glimmer caught his attention.

It was the same faint blue glow unique to the fungi in this cave, but its source was a crack in the rock at the corner of the black wall!

"Could it be..."

Delight flashed in Xia Nan's eyes.

He quickly bent down and used his hands to move aside the loose rocks.

Where the gaps were too narrow, he even drew the dagger at his waist and used all his strength to pry the stones free.

Around twenty minutes later—

A small opening, roughly half a person's height, appeared before Xia Nan in the corner of the black wall.

The faint blue glow grew brighter.

Alone and caring nothing for appearances, he crawled in hand and foot first, following the light.

Unexpectedly, the hole was not deep.

After only a few steps of crawling, the cramped passage suddenly opened up.

A vast space capable of producing multiple echoes appeared before him.

Fungal growths covered the surrounding stone walls, illuminating the entire space brightly.

And Xia Nan, having crawled out of the small opening, instinctively turned around to look at the black wall that had cut across the tunnel.

Buzz—

It was as if time had frozen in that instant.

Sweat dripped from his forehead, leaving a small wet patch on the cold ground.

Xia Nan remained turned around, looking back, but in that instant, his whole body froze.

He did not move.

His gaze was locked on the direction from which he had come.

A black wall?

No. That was not some man-made wall.

The metallic coldness. The fine, scale-like texture...

It was a colossal serpent's body, as thick as a train and large enough to fill the entire tunnel!

It was hard to describe what Xia Nan felt at that moment.

It was like waking in the middle of the night and, in the moonlight, suddenly seeing a section of a snake's body on your bed.

Your first reaction might be to leap up in panic, but at the same time, your eyes would instinctively follow the snake's body in search of its head, trying to determine whether it had crawled into your covers or was merely coiled around the side of the bed.

Overwhelmed by shock, Xia Nan's gaze instinctively followed that unimaginably enormous snake body upward.

The ground, the walls... the ceiling!

"Fuck!"

A chill shot from his tailbone to the crown of his head, and goosebumps rose all over his body.

A terrifying snake head large enough to swallow an entire elephant was directly above him, its cold, violent vertical pupils staring at him without blinking.

That crushing pressure born of their vastly different sizes made him give up resisting after only one look. He instinctively closed his eyes.

One second, two seconds, three seconds...

Xia Nan stood there stiffly. The stabbing pain in his chest and abdomen with every breath reminded him that he was still alive.

He slowly opened his eyes.

It was still that enormous, terrifying giant snake.

But... it was just as motionless.

"Gulp."

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.

Xia Nan vaguely sensed that something was wrong, and his gaze followed the long snake body upward.

Sure enough!

At the very top of the cave's dome, a Brown Stone Spike from who knew where had pinned the giant snake firmly to the ceiling like a thumbtack.

It had struck the vital point, seven inches from the head.

The giant snake's seemingly cold, savage eyes had long since lost their light.

Its train-sized body, like the countless white bones outside the cave, had become a corpse with no possibility of revival.

He let out a small sigh of relief.

Only this way did Xia Nan have the chance to carefully examine the giant snake's appearance while still alive.

Its entire body was jet-black, covered in Inky Scales as cold and hard as metal. Its thick, long body coiled and wound through the cave, making it impossible to judge its exact length.

The scales on its face were snow-white and utterly flawless, making its snake eyes seem even greener, like jade and emeralds, its pupils deep and devoid of light.

In the middle of its head, hanging high in the air, were several pure golden scales gleaming with golden light, ornamenting the back of its head like a headdress.

For some reason, as he looked at the terrifying giant snake before him,

Xia Nan suddenly recalled cutting off Goblin ears and extracting Rust Monster poison glands.

A bold yet perfectly reasonable idea gradually began to take shape in his mind.

As an adventurer, bringing back a bit of loot...

That was perfectly normal, right?